Anelida shook hands with her hostess, expected, perhaps, some brief return of the morning’s excessive cordiality, heard a voice say, “So kind of you to come,” and witnessed the phenomenon of the triangular smile. Followed by Octavius, she moved on to Charles. And then she was face to face with Richard, who, as quickly as he could, had made his way down the room to meet them.

“Well?” Timon Gantry said.

“Well,” Marchant repeated. “What is it?”

“It’s an actress.”

“Any good?”

“I’ll answer that one,” Gantry said, “a little later.”

“Are you up to something?”

“Yes.”

“What, for God’s sake?”

“Patience, patience.”

“I sometimes wonder, Timmy, why we put up with you.”

“You needn’t. You put up with me, dear boy, because I give the Management its particular brand of prestige.”

“So you say.”

“True?”

“I won’t afford you the ignoble satisfaction of saying so.”

“All the same, to oblige me, stay where you are.”

He moved towards the group of three that was slowly making its way down the drawing-room.

Marchant continued to look at Anelida.

When Richard met Anelida and took her hand he found, to his astonishment, he was unable to say to her any of the things that for the last ten years he had so readily said to lovely ladies at parties. The usual procedure would have been to kiss her neatly on the cheek, tell her she looked marvellous and then pilot her by the elbow about the room. If she was his lady of the moment, he would contrive to spend a good deal of time in her company and they would probably dine somewhere after the party. How the evening then proceeded would depend upon a number of circumstances, none of which seemed to be entirely appropriate to Anelida. Richard felt, unexpectedly, that his nine years seniority were more like nineteen.

Octavius had found a friend. This was Miss Bellamy’s physician, Dr. Harkness, a contemporary of Octavius’s Oxford days and up at the House with him. They could be left together, happily reminiscent, and Anelida could be given her dry Martini and introduced to Pinky and Bertie, who were tending to hunt together through the party.

Bertie said rapidly, “I do congratulate you. Do swear to me on your sacred word of honour, never to wear anything but white and always, but always with your clever hat. Ever!”

“You mustn’t take against Bertie,” Pinky said kindly. “It’s really a smashing compliment, coming from him.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Anelida said. It struck her that they were both behaving rather oddly. They kept looking over her shoulder as if somebody or something behind her exerted a strange attraction over them. They did this so often that she felt impelled to follow their gaze and did so. It was Mary Bellamy at whom they had been darting their glances. She had moved further into the room and stood quite close, surrounded by a noisy group of friends. She herself was talking. But to Anelida’s embarrassment she found Miss Bellamy’s eyes looked straight into her own, coldly and searchingly. It was not, she was sure, a casual or accidental affair. Miss Bellamy had been watching her and the effect was disconcerting. Anelida turned away only to meet another pair of eyes, Timon Gantry’s. And beside him yet another pair, Montague Marchant’s, speculative, observant. It was like an inversion of her ridiculous daydream and she found it disturbing. “The cynosure of all eyes indeed! With a difference,” thought Anelida.

But Richard was beside her, not looking at her, his arm scarcely touching hers, but there, to her great content. Pinky and Bertie talked with peculiar energy, making a friendly fuss over Anelida but conveying, nevertheless, a singular effect of nervous tension.

Presently Richard said, “Here’s somebody else who would like to meet you, Anelida.” She looked up at a brick-coloured Guardee face and a pair of surprised blue eyes. “Colonel Warrender,” Richard said.

After his bumpy fashion, Warrender made conversation. “Everybody always shouts at these things, isn’t it? Haven’t got up to pitch yet but will, of course. You’re on the stage, isn’t it?”

“Just.”

“Jolly good! What d’you think of Dicky’s plays?”

Anelida wasn’t yet accustomed to hearing Richard called Dicky or to being asked that sort of question in that sort of way.

She said, “Well — immensely successful, of course.”

“Oh!” he said. “Successful! Awfully successful! ’Course. And I like ’em, you know. I’m his typical audience — want something gay and ’musing, with a good part for Mary. Not up to intellectual drama. Point is, though, is he satisfied? What d’you think? Wasting himself or not? What?”

Anelida was greatly taken aback and much exercised in her mind. Did this elderly soldier know Richard very intimately or did all Richard’s friends plunge on first acquaintance into analyses of each other’s inward lives for the benefit of perfect strangers? And did Warrender know about Husbandry in Heaven?

Again she had the feeling of being closely watched.

She said, “I hope he’ll give us a serious play one of these days and I shouldn’t have thought he’ll be really satisfied until he does.”

“Ah!” Warrender exclaimed, as if she’d made a dynamic observation. “There you are! Jolly good! Keep him up to it. Will you?”

“I!” Anelida cried in a hurry. She was about to protest that she was in no position to keep Richard up to anything, when it occurred to her, surprisingly, that Warrender might consider any such disclaimer an affectation.

“But does he need ‘keeping up’?” she asked.

“Oh Lord, yes!” he said. “What with one thing and another. You must know all about that.”

Anelida reminded herself she had only drunk half a dry Martini, so she couldn’t possibly be under the influence of alcohol. Neither, she would have thought, was Colonel Warrender. Neither, apparently, was Miss Bellamy or Charles Templeton or Miss Kate Cavendish or Mr. Bertie Saracen. Nor, it would seem, was Mr. Timon Gantry to whom, suddenly, she was being introduced by Richard.

“Timmy,” Richard was saying. “Here is Anelida Lee.”

To Anelida it was like meeting a legend.

“Good evening,” the so-often mimicked voice was saying. “What is there for us to talk about? I know. You shall tell me precisely why you make that ‘throw-it-over-your-shoulder’ gesture in your final speech and whether it is your own invention or a bit of producer’s whimsy.”

“Is it wrong?” Anelida demanded. She then executed the mime that is know in her profession as a double-take. Her throat went dry, her eyes started and she crammed the knuckle of her gloved hand between her separated teeth. “You haven’t seen me!” she cried.

“But I have. With Dicky Dakers.”

“Oh my God!” whispered Anelida, and this was not an expression she was in the habit of using.

“Look out. You’ll spill your drink. Shall we remove a little from this barnyard cacophony? The conservatory seems at the moment to be unoccupied.”

Anelida disposed of her drink by distractedly swallowing it. “Come along,” Gantry said. He took her by the elbow and piloted her towards the conservatory. Richard, as if by sleight-of-hand, had disappeared. Octavius was lost to her.

“Good evening, Bunny. Good evening, my dear Paul. Good evening, Tony,” Gantry said with the omniscience of M. de Charlus. Celebrated faces responded to these greetings and drifted astern. They were in the conservatory and for the rest of her life the smell of freesias would carry Anelida back to it.

“There!” Gantry said, releasing her with a little pat. “Now then.”

“Richard didn’t tell me. Nobody said you were in front.”

“Nobody knew, dear. We came in during the first act and left before the curtain. I preferred it.”

She remembered, dimly, that this kind of behavior was part of his legend.